


Two In One

by Seiya234



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Anthropomorphic, F/F, Gen, Genderbending, Night Vale is Alive, and thinks you really need to change your sheets., listen to the faceless old woman in your home
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-22
Updated: 2013-10-22
Packaged: 2017-12-30 04:47:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1014279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Seiya234/pseuds/Seiya234
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cecily and Night Vale are One.</p><p>It takes Carla a while to figure that out</p>
            </blockquote>





	Two In One

**Author's Note:**

> Lord, this thing has been eating my brain forever. Hope you enjoy it! 
> 
> Spoilers through Episode 32, Yellow Helicopters. Episode 33 came out while I was writing this and totes jossed a part of this so you have been warned.

Carla had figured out and accepted at this point that Cecily and Night Vale were linked, somehow, together, a symbiotic relationship.

Still, it wasn’t until the takeover of the town by StrexCorp turned from covert to overt, and her girlfriend’s doppelgänger kidnapped her and drug her into the recording booth that she realized how deep that link went.

Also, how ridiculous her life had become but at that point it was a secondary or even tertiary concern.

_________________________________________________

Cecily didn’t mean to run Telly out of town.

…..

Okay she kind of did.

(Zie and hir Voice were One, and both were at some level one with every person living in Night Vale.

So it was no problem for hir Voice to manipulate the minds of everyone around her and have them run Telly out of town.

Zie supposed that zie should have been the responsible one and tried to dissuade hir Voice from this course of action but…well…

Telly had done an awful job on hir Scientist’s hair.)

_________________________________________________

Cecily was generally a very cheerful and easy going woman, a smile always on her face.

Carla didn’t think it was a coincidence then that the few times she cried was when the skies above town would open up and let loose with rain.

And when things would go from normal desert dry to ‘we probably only have a few weeks of water left, Carla noticed that Cecily would become uncommonly clumsy, tripping and falling over everything, until she hurt herself enough for tears to fall. Then the rain would come and she would be back to her graceful self.

(When hir Voice was sad, the sky itself would mourn with her.

And when hir people needed water….zie couldn’t make the sky love hir or hir people , but zie could influence the one person the sky did love)

 

__________________________________________________

“You can’t possibly know everyone in town,” Carla had snapped one day, when they had been in enough contact with each other to start cycling together.

(That was one downside of loving women, Carla had long ago noted: mutual periods)

“Do so.”

“Do not.” (“Oh my god, what are we, five?” Carla thought)

They went back and forth like that for another minute or two until Cecily pulled out her copy of the Purple Pages.

“You point out anyone in here, and I can tell you something about them.”

“How will I know you aren’t making things up?”

Cecily looked aghast. “I would never!” She paused for a second. “I can’t. Not about the town.”

The scientist in Carla wanted to call bullshit on that but there was something deep and resonating behind Cecily’s words that made her think Cecily had to tell the truth, when it came to Night Vale.

“Okay…” She flipped the book open and pointed to the first name she didn’t recognize. “Serge Cisneros.”

“He is an attorney that works for the City Council, though neither he nor they know why such persons as the Council members need an attorney.”

She was using her radio voice, Carla noticed.

Flip flip flip “Mary Ardent”

“Three years ago a hooded figure tried to take her daughter. She ran it over with a car. She never realized that they could bleed, let alone so much…”

“Jerry Liu.”

“He’s not voting for that prick Hiram; he thinks he’s hot shit because he has five heads. There’s nothing special about having two extra heads more than normal dragons like Jerry.”

Carla picked out another two or three but then decided to stop. It didn’t seem right to be hearing these thoughts, these secrets…especially that as small as Night Vale was, she’d probably run into these people eventually.

And she was worried she was hurting Cecily. Her voice, her body movements, changed with every person. As if-no Carla, you can’t ignore the evidence however improbable- she was channeling the person. Carla’s hindbrain noted that the longer they did this, the more….weight Cecily’s words gained, like there was a far greater Presence speaking in concert with her.

Her forebrain scoffed at that but still Carla said, “Ok, ok, you win!”

Cecily grinned at her, whatever gravity she had instantly gone. “This means I don’t have to do the dishes right?”

Carla threw a pillow at her and as things got sillier from there, the experiment left her mind.

(Zie and hir Voice were One, so of course zie loved the Scientist as fiercely as her Voice did.

However, just because they were One did not mean they were the same, at the least for practicality; the Voice couldn’t join hir for hir fights with similar forces in the Twelfth dimension, and zie could do without all the needs that came with having a mostly human form….

Point being, hir Voice may not have thought so, but zie felt it important to remind hir lovely Scientist that They were nothing to trifle with or doubt.

Also, that was good to know about Jerry and Hiram. One of them would have to look into that before it blossomed into something nasty.)

__________________________________________________

Zie was well aware of Desert Bluffs, as Desert Bluffs was aware of hir.

They fought each other on many planes of existence, and when the Voice of hir greatest enemy entered into hir realm, it was….wrong.

Zie didn’t feel the sensation of pain very often, but that day zie roared hir displeasure and it became the howls of the sandstorm swirling through hir.

(Cecily was terrified, not only for the forsaken hellscape she found herself in but she was getting the feeling that she was like an irritant in some great giant’s eye, soon to be thoughtlessly wiped away.

She felt like there was a part of her missing too, and when she got back, she was whole again.)

__________________________________________________

Birds, pterodactyls, and winged eldritch creatures all seemed to go out of their way to poop on Steve Carlsberg’s tan Corolla.

“Maybe,” Carla ventured soon after they moved in together, “he wouldn’t be so cranky if things didn’t shit on his car and house so much.”

Cecily chopped the carrots with considerably more force than required. “He knows what he did.”

Pause. “And despite that, he still barely takes his car to the wash. C’mon, a TAN COROLLA….” Carla let Cecy rant, wondering at what she first said.

(The brains of the many winged beasts that flew over hir were small and easy enough to manipulate.

It was one of the minor annoyances zie plagued Carlsberg with. Zie would have kicked him out of hirself altogether but her Voice showed mercy towards him so zie stayed with hir current course of action.

He deserved worse though.

He knows what he did, and indeed the deed flashes through his brain just as a pigeon lands a big one on his head.)

__________________________________________________

The City Council, the Hooded Figures, the Man In a Tan Jacket… all worked within hir physical presence only on hir allowance, something which they seemed to forget.

Actually, even such august creatures steeped in forbidden and dread knowledge seemed to forget often that zie existed.

Which suited hir fine really. They tended to parts of hir physical being and the minor dimensions zie existed in that zie couldn’t be bothered with all the time. This left hir energy free to deal with more important matters.

Sometimes these outside forces forgot their place however. And while zie was neither good nor evil, and operated on scales cosmic in force…well, zie was still so very fond of the little mortals that inhabited hir corporeal being.

If only because they belonged to hir and hir alone, and no one else. Certainly not to some jumped up demons and tin pot elder gods. They were for hir to use and play with and protect.

So writing utensils were banned and hir Voice spent a show talking about toothpicks and needles and the feathers from birds and so on.

The claptrap about earning one’s death was to cover for the fact that the mortals living in the town who died at the hands of the authorities would come back, perishing truly only through natural causes or accidents or by their fellow citizens.

Reeducation usually was a blank period of time in one person’s mind, mainly because nothing literally happened to them. Usually all parties sat in a room for about five minutes staring into space before going home.

Bad things still happened. Zie was above human morality, and sometimes zie was distracted and a Dog Park got built that zie couldn’t shake off.

But no matter what, hir Voice said whatever she wanted, reported what needed to be known.

And no one messed with hir Voice.

(The day station management left their offices, Cecily remembered barely escaping but waking up with only a sore throat and head the next day.

She didn’t remember the Words of binding that an entity as dear to her as her mother or a lover spoke through her.

She didn’t remember how she and the town became one and she went in at one point to physically rip apart recalcitrant members of Station Management.

And she certainly did not remember what she did that made half of Station Management disappear in an instant, and that was all her doing there, not Night Vale.

She did remember a vague feeling that this was a contract renegotiation for the record books. Also, she really needed to wash all of this odd colored fluid off of her.)

___________________________________________________

In out in out in out.

Cecily didn’t exactly meditate per se.

In out in out in out

But she did like to go out at night on the little balcony of her apartment, and look at the moon (what was up with the moon?) and the stars and avoid the Void. She would lie on her back and just breathe, until she got sore from lying on the pavement and had to go back inside.

In out in out in out.

But for now she was enjoying the feel of the breeze going back and forth across the town, in time with her breath

(Because sometimes zie was curious about having a human form, and hir Voice didn’t notice hir slipping into her skin with her, and the wind becoming one with their breath)

___________________________________________________

There were two pictures that hung above Cecily’s couch in a place of honor.

The first was of a couple with a squirming baby.

“That’s my dad, Mort,” she had said to Carla, pointing to the man with ginger hair and pale skin that was probably perpetually sunburnt. He was dressed in leggings, suspenders, no shirt, and a bolo tie. Even just looking at a picture, Carla got the same sense of intense earnestness that Cecily had. Also the same fashion sense.

 

“He died in a car accident when I was three so my mom, Neona, raised me.” Her mother had been a stunning woman, with dark skin the color of the earth after the rain, cat’s eye glasses, and dreads down to her waist. She wore a tunic that Carla recognized.

“Momma made all our clothes; she had a shop in town right up til the day she passed, and I’ve kept everything.”

Carla slipped her hand around her girlfriend’s waist. “When did she pass…um, if you don’t mind saying er…”

Cecily smiled a bit, “No my wonderful Carla, its okay, and you’ve told me all about your family…she died about a year before you came, of breast cancer.”

They stood in silence for a minute, before Cecily wiped a tear from her eye and gestured to the other picture. “And that is from the last WTNV reunion four years ago.”

There were about fifty people, ranging in probable age from 15 to 100. And in the middle was Cecily, an older man with antlers and gnarled hands and an even older woman in a sari with a mohawk.

“That’s Sergio and Shati: they’re the last two DJs before me.”

“And they’re still alive?” Carla blurted out before she could stop herself.

“Of course! No DJ has died in the course of duty since 1943 at WTNV! No, Shati left in 1969 to attend Woodstock which we all know lasted about 20 years, and Serge left when I was 22 because his arthritis was getting bad.”

As Cecily prattled on about the various personages in the picture Carla relaxed a bit. She felt bad for feeling calmer but well, it was good to know that Cecily had parents, that there was some vague semblance of normality to her job at the station.

(Hir last three Voices had been a reporter for the paper, the mayor, and the town midwife.

All of them mortal, and not, as a passing thought that went through hir Dearest Scientist’s head wondered, immortal or created from the ether.

All zie needed in a Voice was someone who loved hir, and that the whole town would pay attention to.

The reporter, flaming red hair and an equally fiery spirit; she had loved hir fiercely, and wrote articles the whole town clipped and kept.

The mayor, long dark hair done in a braid, from before the Mayor was a creature of the City Council and served hir instead. Zie had loved him, and when he was killed by his successor, the ground shook with hir rage, and Pamela Winchell was voted in not long after, due to the previous mayor being swallowed whole by the ground opening up around him.

The midwife, descended from the men who had built the railroad into town, and decided to stay. Fifty years and not a baby lost; zie may have helped with that a bit. And everyone knew that they should listen to her, not if they didn’t want a smack around the ear.

Hir Voice now though…. she was different. There were the things she was capable of, even without hir help. Things she was unaware of, for now.

Zie had never loved any one as much as zie did hir radio announcer. And no one had loved hir as deep and true back.

Zie let their Scientist relax for now, even as zie worked to keep her and hir Voice around for a bit longer than most normal mortals.)

___________________________________________________

Zie was willing to bide hir time, to wait and see how much of a threat this StrexCorp presented, and analyze their weaknesses before marshaling a counterattack.

That was before this little mortal company somehow kicked out the minor elder gods that ran the Radio Station, tried to interfere in the election, and brought That One in.

Zie had not been this furious since...well, it had been several millenia.

How dare they try and replace hir Voice.

Hir Voice was upset as well and then zie felt pure anguish from her as...

oh...

oh no they didn't.

That was it. This ended now.

\----

One minute Carla was walking to her lab, as lost in thought as was safely possible in Night Vale, the next she had been grabbed by the hair and a hand reached to her temple-

-and then she was in the booth and there was a face looking at her that on the surface was like Cecily's but....

no. No. Whoever the fuck this was looking at her, it was NOT her girlfriend.

Not with those eyes. Or that mouth twisted into something that she thought was a smile but was not.

The not-Cecily knelt down to her and started to stroke her hair. Carla was unbound but found herself unable to move when she tried to get the fuck away.

"Hello lovely lady!" and thank God she at least sounded different than Cecy. "I used to have a scientist like you but" and terrible shadows passed over the woman's face, "she left me."

She kept stroking. "Luckily I still have her hair in the booth with me. And now I've met you! I'm Karen!"

Oh god. She was captured and probably going to get killed by a demon woman named Karen. Fantastic.

"I'm not sure how long we will have together. And I so love your hair...you won't mind if I take a lock do you?" Karen asked. 

She held up a hand with nails that were lengthening and sharpening and oh jesus she had a vision of what happened to her counterpart and oh god she was coming closer and her nails were pricking the base of her skull and this was it and she didn't get to say goodbye to Cecy and there was pressure and

STOP

It wasn't even a spoken word so much as something that Carla felt to her bones.

It was followed by Cecily coming in through the wall.

wait...yup, she just came through the wall, like there was nothing in her way, Carla's dazed brain informed her.

The love of her life was now wreathed in shadows which swayed and struck out every which way. Her eyes had gone pitch black, and were glowing a faint purple. There were little sparks in her afro, and her hands had gone into claws like Karen's. She was floating a half inch above the ground.

And even though Carla knew this was Cecily, this was the woman she loved, that she had come to rescue her...she was also a little scared and freaked out right now.

At that thought, one of the shadows bounced over to her and began to nose at her like a puppy, making sure she was okay. Carla was both reassured that Cecily would never harm her, and also amazed about how fucking weird her life had become.

Karen stood up, furious. "She's mine now," Karen hissed, pulling Carla up by the hair

(and damnit why was she the damsel in distress in this? Also, best excuse ever to get a hair cut if she survived this)

and-oh god-phasing them through some walls until they were outside, a car with the StrexCorp logo waiting.

(later, Carla would wonder why they went outside in the first place considering that Karen dragged her there in the first place, and then realized, with a slightly hysterical laugh, that Karen didn't want to damage the equipment)

Cecily burst out a moment later just in time to see Karen dragging Carla towards the car and promptly lost whatever cool she had left in her state.

Carla was not only dropped, but able to move again. She rolled over and propped herself up on shaky arms to see Cecily holding Karen immobile in the air with her shadows.

"This," and her voice dripped with hate and malice, "is Our town. These are Our people. You will leave, and you will leave now, and you will never touch what is Ours again."

There was someone...some Thing, speaking in concert with her. Carla felt very small all of the sudden.

Karen said something-Carla didn't catch it-and Cecily howled, which broke all of the windows around and made Carla's nose bleed.

"She is not yours! She is Our love and Our Scientist and you will never FUCKING TOUCH HER AGAIN".

That last part was all Cecily as she pitched Karen into the air, like a ball, and watched as her counterpart went sailing into the distance. She turned and looked at the yellow StrexCorp car, and the helicopters, and the besuited men and women who had turned up, presumably as Karen's backup as part of a more forceful take over of the town.

Cecily pointed. "Leave."

Carla, who had managed to sit up at this point, still feeling weak and shaky, never thought people could get into vehicles that fast, let alone drive them off in under two minutes.

She looked at Cecily, who drifted slightly downward to join her.

"Did she hurt you Our love?" she asked in her double voice and that was when Carla realized who that other presence could be.

"Scared me more than I ever thought I would be scared in my life, but I'm fine. Are you...are you all okay?"

Cecily smiled as her eyes came back to normal, and she landed on the ground, and her nails receded.

(The shadows stayed for another few minutes. That was all hir Voice there. There were things, zie later reflected, her mother should really have told her in regards to ancestry and the alignment of the stars at the moment of her birth)

"Yes, yes I am. And so is zie."

Later, there would be questions. Later, Cecily would deal with her new knowledge of the link she shared with her town, and Carla would poke and prod and experiment and they would both laugh and put up with it.

All of that was later, could wait.

For now, Cecily was content to lie with Carla, and zie was content to watch over them under the stars, and all of them watch the angels return to Night Vale


End file.
